Suman and her daughters, 19-year-old Sunita and 16-year-old Lakshmi, were headed for Haidarpur in North Delhi on a crowded Metro train on the afternoon of April 21. Sunita is speech and hearing impaired and the family was returning home after consulting doctors at Lok Nayak Hospital in Central Delhi about her condition. When they reached the Jahangirpuri station, one stop before Haidarpur, they realised the train would terminate there and they would have to deboard and change trains.
“It seemed like the entire crowd could not wait a second to rush out of the train,” recalled Suman, who goes by one name only. “It took us a few seconds to reach the exit door. Lakshmi stepped out first and by the time I managed to come out, I lost my grip on Sunita’s arm. As I turned back, I saw the train doors close.”
Sunita has been missing since then, despite efforts by her parents and the police to find her. In this period, her family was bounced around between multiple agencies – the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation that operates the service, the Central Industrial Security Force entrusted with security on Metro premises, and a special Metro unit of the Delhi Police to ensure law and order – just to ascertain who would handle their complaint.
Retracing their steps
Suman went to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation first, raising an alarm with its officials at the Jahangirpuri station soon after she saw the train leave the platform with her daughter still inside. Within minutes, a message was sent to other stations on the route. When that failed to reunite Sunita with her mother, the officials checked closed-circuit camera footage of stations on that route. Sunita was spotted deboarding the train at Adarsh Nagar, the next station on the reverse route.
The train left Jahangirpuri at around 1.30 pm, Metro officials made the announcement at around 1.35 pm and Sunita scanned out of the automated fare collection gate at Adarsh Nagar at around 1.45 pm, leaving the premises through exit gate number 2 in another two minutes, said a police official privy to the details of the case, in which no first information report has so far been registered.
On Wednesday, when the incident was reported in a few newspapers, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation issued a statement saying, “DMRC on its part ensured timely assistance in searching the girl in its premises as per the details provided by the parent [mother] but she had already exited the premises before the staff could approach her to reunite with her parent.”
The Central Industrial Security Force, which does not usually deploy personnel near the fare gates, has not issued a statement.
Suman then called up her husband, Ram, who works in a factory in Murthal in Haryana. They went to the nearest police station at Jahangirpuri. “There we were told they [the local police] will not entertain the complaint as the matter happened inside the premises of a Metro station,” said Ram. “We were directed to the Kashmere Gate Metro Police Station. But there we were told the case should be handled by the local police as the girl was last spotted walking out of the station premises before she went missing.”
Finally, a complaint was recorded at the Metro police station after senior police officials intervened. But by then, a lot of time had already passed. And when the investigation finally began, it revealed a lack of vigilance on the part of officials at the Adarsh Nagar Metro station – Sunita had crossed the automated fare collection gate without a token, which is a punishable offence under the Delhi Metro Act.
Major lapses
“The police came to know about the incident when the girl’s parents came to the police station, but it was already too late then,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Delhi Metro) Jitendra Mani. “We should have been kept in the loop from the very beginning.” The search for Sunita has since been expanded to the neighbouring states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan. Mani, however, ruled out any confusion regarding jurisdiction.
According to investigators, the CCTV footage revealed that a commuter had helped Sunita cross the fare gates without a token. The family had purchased three tokens at New Delhi Metro station, where they boarded the train, and all three were with Suman. “Had the Metro authorities stopped the girl for the offence, she could have been rescued easily,” Mani said.
The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation said none of its officials had spotted anyone crossing the fare gates without a token in that particular hour and it had come to their notice only on going through the camera footage. “It was immediately reported to top officials,” said a senior official with the corporation who did not wish to be identified.
On Wednesday, the Delhi High Court pulled up the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation and the Central Industrial Security Force for the lapse, saying, “Had they been vigilant, such sort of incident would have never happened.”
The first person a distressed commuter is likely to approach on a Metro premises is a security guard. These guards are employed by private agencies who are under contract with the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation.
In 2014, this reporter had helped reunite a seven-year-old boy with his father at Rajiv Chowk Metro station in Central Delhi. The boy was crying on the platform after being left behind while his father had boarded a train. There were a few security guards on the platform who, despite standing near the boy, chose to remain mute spectators.
“Every security guard is given training once deployed in a Metro station and there are guidelines to be followed in case of such unexpected situations,” the Metro official said. “But how promptly they act is a matter of experience.”
Asked if Sunita’s case was the first one in which they had failed to act swiftly enough, the officer said there are numerous instances of stranded commuters, mostly children, who are reunited with family members, but this is an exceptional case.